year1981
month1
titleBoxer Genesis

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labelBoxer Genesis
year1993
month1
titleToward an Epistemiology of Physics

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labelEpis. of
Physics


year2000
month1
titleChanging Minds

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labelChanging Minds
year2014
month4
titleLast Boxer Build

labelLast Build

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year2018
month6
day11
titleThe Toronto Meetup
labelToronto

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notesPrologue: Discovering a project by the lakefront
"A jib is luffed, the commodore saluted.
A book is read, a keynote arranged...
... the preliminary terrors passed,
a reconstruction can begin."


During a random project meeting at
the IDRC, Antranig finishes reading
Changing Minds in our Kubrick style
AirBNB, ( and we are even later than
usual for meetings talking about it ). After
several rounds of email, Andy is invited to
PPIG Art Workers Guild.



year2018
month9
day5
titlePPIG and Camaraderie
labelPPIG AWG

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notesI Criticize the Pernicious Imperialism of Computational Thinking

In 2018 technology and tradition come together as we
bond over craftsmanship, ideas, and visions for the future.

Andy talks about the Multiple Psychologies of Programming
in the Service of Learning Science and Mathematics. During
which he gives a live demo of boxer, showing how it fits in
to many facets of his daily life and and workflow.

We are able to get the relatively obsure link to a page
the download of the last Boxer Build from 2014. I am able to
get this up and running on my macbook.


"Pantone colors mix on a table
like the future and the past.
Technologists and Guild members
steady their hands and minds to their work."






year2018
month11
day21
titleFollow-up and finding the source
labelHistoric
Source

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notesNovember 21st, 2018

On this day we get the source of boxer. As a raw directory archive and
shortly later as a shared dropbox. The previous developer on the project,
Ed Lay, unfortunately passed away in 2014. Andy was able to find the
source from his remaining drives, which may have nearly been lost.

Antranig does a raw reading through of the source and compiles a
spreadsheet of the files. It is 117615 lines of common lisp. At this point
it becomes clear how close the world came to loosing a functioning boxer.

The most recent binary release from 2014 is a 32-bit MacOS application,
Mojave was the last release of MacOS to support running 32-bit MacOS
applications. It's not entirely clear what list runtime the source would run
under (the answer was only lispworks), or how to build it, run it, etc.

year2019
month6
titleWandering in the Wilderness
label#+symbolics

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notesDecember 2018 thru April 2020

- Currently has dependencies on 3-ish libraries from the commerical lisp distribution lispworks.
Can run it with the free edition, but need a paid license to create application bundles for end users.
- Was build using a wild multi run compilation pipeline using a precursor of the now popular asdf
framework. I never got this to work, and instead stitched the source and tangle of circular loading
dependencies back together with a new asdf package.

Brilliant algorithms and implementation


Supporting every lisp ever...



year2020
month4
day16
titlePandemic rendering and establishing cadence
labelCovid

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notesOn April 16th, 2020, the Boxer Canvas finally renders again. After this things start moving fairly quickly
and I'm able to get another subsystem working here and there every week..

After ~17 months in the trenches....

year2020
month6
day17
titleBoxer Sunrise
labelSunrise

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notesOn June 17th, 2020 we have the first new Boxer Application, which can now run on
current versions of MacOS, and we have escaped once more from being hurtled out
in to space.

From this point we've established a regular cadence of about one test build a month,
and as of last month these full releases are now published as fully public github
releases with the binary and accompanying source code.

First self contained boxer build since 2014

year2021
month1
title40 years of Boxer
label40 Years

icon
notesThings are progressing well. Andy is putting together a foundation to support
boxer development. I'm spending all my time on boxer development as of October.
We're not completely out of the woods yet but getting close...

- Currently focusing on aesthetic and visual improvement.
toggle-fonts

- Still lots of crash fixing and some user interface basics on manipulating boxes.
- Refactoring to eventually remove our dependency on lispworks.
Ideally the core boxer evaluator will be updated to portable common lisp,
allowing more flexibily indisplay layers. Move to a more general OpenGL
implementation (with modernizedOpenGL usage), the ability to write other
frontends.... WebGL or Pixi.js over websockets or electron IPC calls. An audio
accessible version of the boxer structure tree for the visually impaired...
- Improved extensibility for the desktop versions.. audio/video, connecting to external
devices, arduino, json buses, exporting data for publishing, display, sharing
notebooks.
- Improved performance for turtles and fixups for Andy's Physics textbook and other
curricula.
- Modern security restrictions and options.
- Lots of other exciting future "stuff".
- A growing community of users developing a computational literacy.

Daisy the Boxer
Meadow Daisy